Extreme Arcology Conference 1 (ExtArc1)

About the Extreme Arcology Conference

ExtArc1 is the first Extreme Arcology Conference and is explicitly presented as an online meeting. Its purpose is to advance discussion of arcologies: large, integrated settlements whose built environment, resource systems and community functions are designed together. The 2026 theme narrows that broad idea to self-sufficiency systems, asking what a settlement must produce, recycle, maintain and govern when resupply is difficult or impossible.

Moonbase Lappträsk provides the practical context. The Swedish analogue initiative explores how a small community could rely on locally available materials and energy, with representative processes grouped around extraction, manufacturing, greenhouse functions and habitat needs. ExtArc1 takes that systems view into a conference format for researchers, policymakers and practitioners. Although lunar settlement is a prominent use case, the questions also apply to remote terrestrial communities and other extreme environments. The event is therefore more specific than a general space architecture conference and broader than a single habitat-design workshop, because it considers complete settlement systems and their dependencies.

Event history and organiser

ExtArc1 is an inaugural conference, so it has no previous editions and should not be described as an established annual series. Its background comes instead from Moonbase Lappträsk, a Swedish analogue initiative founded in 2022 after acquiring the former school building in Lappträsk. The project’s stated aim is to validate linked processes for self-sustaining human settlement using local resources and energy, with lessons intended for the Moon and for sustainable living on Earth. ISRU.tech publishes the conference page, RSVP and call-for-papers document. Moonbase Lappträsk has also hosted or promoted virtual lunar-development meetings, which provides relevant experience with online discussion, but those are separate events and not earlier ExtArc editions. The correct historical framing is therefore a genuinely new specialist online conference emerging from an active self-sufficiency and lunar-analogue project, not a continuation of the Lunar Development Conference series.

Topics and themes

The self-sufficiency theme treats an extreme settlement as an interdependent system in which material, energy, biological and social choices affect one another.

• In-situ resource utilisation: local extraction of water, minerals, gases and other inputs reduces dependence on long and vulnerable supply chains.
• Local manufacturing and maintenance: simple, repairable processes and a limited equipment set can improve resilience when replacement parts are scarce.
• Food, air and water systems: greenhouse production, recycling and material-flow accounting connect life support with day-to-day community operation.
• Habitat and arcology design: built space must integrate shelter, work, food production, storage, exercise and collective functions under environmental constraints.
• Energy and system integration: generation, storage and demand must be considered alongside production systems rather than as an isolated engineering layer.
• Policy and community practice: governance, acceptable risk and human behaviour influence whether technically plausible self-sufficient systems remain workable over time.

Who should attend?

ExtArc1 is aimed at researchers, policymakers and practitioners studying arcologies or self-sufficient structures. The strongest fit includes ISRU engineers, space architects, habitat and life-support designers, closed-loop agriculture specialists, energy and manufacturing researchers, systems modellers and analogue-mission teams. People working on remote terrestrial settlements, disaster resilience or circular resource systems may also bring useful comparative experience. Policy and social-science participants can address governance, community design and the limits of technical self-sufficiency. Students with relevant research can follow the call-for-papers route where still applicable. The event is not an in-person tour of Moonbase Lappträsk, and a general space-business audience may find it too specialised unless their work directly intersects habitat or resource autonomy.

Practical information

ExtArc1 begins at 19:00 CEST on 11 September and ends at 23:00 CEST on 13 September 2026. The official venue is online, not Lappträsk, Sweden.

RSVP through the event page and confirm the virtual platform, joining link, complete programme, recording policy and call-for-papers status. International participants should convert each published session time from CEST carefully.